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[Rolan7]

My father has always operated on *not* having debt and he has done just fine 🤔

That's a nice benefit of having capital but most people utilize mortgages, student loans, and installment plans on cars if not other appliances.  It's often the best long term choice under capitalism, even though you end up paying a lot more, because you get the good thing and can use it to make more money.  Home ownership has a lot of costs yet it's generally more lucrative than renting (particularly before the housing bubble...)

I like to think of it like one of those vidya games like Starcraft.  If someone offered you a 500 mineral loan at the start of the game, but you had to pay back 1000 in 10 minutes, it'd be an astoundingly easy choice.  More skilled players might only need 3 minutes or less to leverage that capital.

Of course that looming specter of debt keeps everyone on edge and focused on literally buying their lives back.  Not everyone makes it.  Horrifying, huh?  That's capitalism, baby, and it inspires a certain selfishness despite our better natures.  Why does no one stop climate change?  Because most of us aren't free to do so, and the people who do have power didn't get it by caring about others.

[Reelya]

My father has always operated on *not* having debt and he has done just fine 🤔

It's quite different for individuals vs the government.

If the government pays down all their debt at once that does in fact crash the economy. Not the fact that they paid it, but the fact they need to divert that money from elsewhere. All the programs that need to be axed.

For individuals you don't need to worry about everyone you trade with going broke when you tighten your belt, but the government does, which is why anyone trying to get elected by comparing the national budget to a household budget is a huckster you should vote against.

[Naturegirl1999]

Now that they have the power, they can use said power to stop/mitigate climate change

[ChairmanPoo]

My father has always operated on *not* having debt and he has done just fine 🤔

It's quite different for individuals vs the government.

If the government pays down all their debt at once that does in fact crash the economy. Not the fact that they paid it, but the fact they need to divert that money from elsewhere. All the programs that need to be axed.

For individuals you don't need to worry about everyone you trade with going broke when you tighten your belt, but the government does, which is why anyone trying to get elected by comparing the national budget to a household budget is a huckster you should vote against.

But the previous post wasn't talking about the goverment, but about small business. I don't think it necessarily follows that a small business should run while on debt

[Maximum Spin]

Another factor is that if we massively boost nuclear with current tech then available uranium of sufficient quality wouldn't last very long, so it's not actually a viable thing to scale up to the point that it solves global warming.

That's a claim I've heard before but I ran the numbers and it doesn't appear to be true? I don't know where it came from or what the actual underlying argument is. If it's based on assumed exponential growth of human energy consumption, which is what I suspect, then I'm pretty sure we'd actually cook ourselves - just from heat production alone, regardless of global warming - before we succeeded.

[Reelya]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total. Further exploration and improvements in extraction technology are likely to at least double this estimate over time.

Just math. The estimated known and unknown reserves account for 230 years of fuel at current rates of consumption. That's also 10% of current electricity generation. So if we went 100% nuclear and all the unknown reserves were suddenly revealed to us, then it would only last 23 years, about half the expected lifetime of any of the existing plants.

If you go on a "this is the tech we have now, these are the uranium deposits we know about now" basis then you can't actually build that many more nuclear plants before they're using up the uranium faster than you can find it. At 100% nuclear, known deposits would all have been mined out after 8 years. Uranium could maybe be stretched to 20% of world consumption (known deposits all exhausted after 40 years, the lifetime of the plants), but not really any higher than that without being left with a bunch of expensive doorstops and companies fighting over the scraps of uranium.

So nuclear is good, but it's one of those things that's only good if nobody else is doing it.

[LordBaal]

I'll be a bit optimistic and say: Space resources will make resources real limitless and is the only way to go if we don't kill ourselves/each other first.

[Eric Blank]

That would be true, but nobody wants to invest in trillions of dollars in off-world infrastructure to get off-world mining and fuel production and habitation going unless there's an immediate profit in it. And there's not, not really anyway.

[methylatedspirit]

I've been practicing driving with my dad, and it turns out that I'm worse at keeping within my lane on the highway than on the "normal" (for lack of a better word) roads. In other words, a wider road is harder for me to drive in than a narrow road. I get more margin for error, and somehow I get worse.

[Greiger]

It's because you are going faster, you are never going to be perfectly lined up with the center of your lane. 

If your car drifts maybe a 1 foot off from the center every 300 feet you travel down the road it may not be a big deal at 25 or 30 miles per hour because it takes a bit over 8 seconds to travel that distance.  But if you are off center by the same amount and traveling highway speed, say 75 to 80 mph, that same 300 feet takes only 2.7 seconds.  That can make it a bit harder to stay in lane until you get more experienced, and unfortunately the only way to get more experienced is to do it.

[LordBaal]

Driving a stick?

[hector13]

I've been practicing driving with my dad, and it turns out that I'm worse at keeping within my lane on the highway than on the "normal" (for lack of a better word) roads. In other words, a wider road is harder for me to drive in than a narrow road. I get more margin for error, and somehow I get worse.

Yeah what Greiger said, practice makes perfect. I had to drive 10 hours on highways over 2 days, that rather set me up for being comfortable with driving highways. Also moving house 2 hours away, and doing either the to or from leg of that journey.

[methylatedspirit]

Driving a stick?

I drive automatic. I can only drive automatic. I knew from the start that I probably couldn't multitask well enough to drive stick, so I specifically got an automatic-only driver's license. That means I can't be a taxi, truck or racecar driver, but I wasn't really planning on being one anyway.

[Yoink]

Hot damn, seven new pages in here overnight?!   
I'm probably not gonna go back and read it all, but it's nice to see the forums so active.    

[Naturegirl1999]

Hot damn, seven new pages in here overnight?!   
I'm probably not gonna go back and read it all, but it's nice to see the forums so active.    

Summary: Talking about see through fridges turned into a conversation about launching Antarctica into space, which turned into a conversation about climate change, aerosols, nuclear power etc. and then we went to why don’t people work together, which touched on human tendencies to deny problems...